New Cases: 680,414 (⬆︎ .44%)
New Deaths: 9,981 (⬆︎ .31%)
USA
New Cases: 30,701 (⬆︎ .09%)
New Deaths: 312 (⬆︎ .05%)
Vaccination Scorecard
Total Vaccinations: 147 million (⬆︎ .55%)
Total Eligible Population: 55.0%
Total Population: 44.3%
The weekend slump landed pretty big in the US, slowing the growth significantly - we'll see if it can continue the downward trend in the 7-Day Rolling Average:
Meanwhile, we get to deal with more knuckleheads who just can't quite get their brains wrapped around following good advice.
Around 10% of Americans aren't very eager to get the vaccine, but they're not really hesitant either — they're just waiting to get it until they get around to it, according to new Harris polling.
Why it matters: Making vaccination more convenient will be a big part of the difficult process of getting more shots in arms, now that many of the most eager Americans have gotten their shots.
The big picture:
- As of late April, 43% of respondents said they'd already gotten a shot and another 12% said they plan to go to get one the first day they're able to.
- 10% said they'll get the vaccine whenever they get around to it, and 21% said they will wait awhile and see before getting the vaccine.
- 14% of respondents said they won't get a vaccine — virtually unchanged since January.
What they're saying:
“As those Americans most eager to get the vaccine have now been able to do so, the hard part of earning the trust of those with hesitations or who don’t view it as a top priority begins," said John Gerzema, CEO of The Harris Poll.
Between the lines:
- Young adults are most likely to say they'll get the vaccine whenever they get around to it, or want to wait and see before getting it.
- Black respondents were also particularly likely to say they want to wait and see before getting a shot.
- Making the shots convenient is one of the best ways to reach those who say they'll get it whenever they get around to it, Johns Hopkins' Tara Kirk Sell said.
- "This is actually a very manageable issue. We have people who are willing to get the vaccine, we just have to get it to them," she said. "I think this is a group that is a prime target for the next stage of vaccination."
- Making vaccines available at workplaces, local pharmacies, and via mobile clinics can help this group, she said.
- On the other hand, people who want to wait and see generally don't yet trust the vaccines. Messengers like their doctor or their church (which may also be convenient) could be helpful for persuading this group.
"Now we’re getting to people you’ve got to work harder to get to. You’ve either got to convince them…or you’ve got to get [the vaccine] to a place that’s more convenient to them," Kirk Sell said.
And then there's this over at NYT:
Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe
Widely circulating coronavirus variants and persistent hesitancy about vaccines will keep the goal out of reach. The virus is here to stay, but vaccinating the most vulnerable may be enough to restore normalcy.
Early in the pandemic, when vaccines for the coronavirus were still just a glimmer on the horizon, the term “herd immunity” came to signify the endgame: the point when enough Americans would be protected from the virus so we could be rid of the pathogen and reclaim our lives.
Now, more than half of adults in the United States have been inoculated with at least one dose of a vaccine. But daily vaccination rates are slipping, and there is widespread consensus among scientists and public health experts that the herd immunity threshold is not attainable — at least not in the foreseeable future, and perhaps not ever.
Instead, they are coming to the conclusion that rather than making a long-promised exit, the virus will most likely become a manageable threat that will continue to circulate in the United States for years to come, still causing hospitalizations and deaths but in much smaller numbers.
How much smaller is uncertain and depends in part on how much of the nation, and the world, becomes vaccinated and how the coronavirus evolves. It is already clear, however, that the virus is changing too quickly, new variants are spreading too easily and vaccination is proceeding too slowly for herd immunity to be within reach anytime soon.
Continued immunizations, especially for people at highest risk because of age, exposure or health status, will be crucial to limiting the severity of outbreaks, if not their frequency, experts believe.
“The virus is unlikely to go away,” said Rustom Antia, an evolutionary biologist at Emory University in Atlanta. “But we want to do all we can to check that it’s likely to become a mild infection.”
The shift in outlook presents a new challenge for public health authorities. The drive for herd immunity — by the summer, some experts once thought possible — captured the imagination of large segments of the public. To say the goal will not be attained adds another “why bother” to the list of reasons that vaccine skeptics use to avoid being inoculated.
Yet vaccinations remain the key to transforming the virus into a controllable threat, experts said.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the Biden administration’s top adviser on Covid-19, acknowledged the shift in experts’ thinking.
“People were getting confused and thinking you’re never going to get the infections down until you reach this mystical level of herd immunity, whatever that number is,” he said.
“That’s why we stopped using herd immunity in the classic sense,” he added. “I’m saying: Forget that for a second. You vaccinate enough people, the infections are going to go down.”
- more -
The take-aways are basically - we're still shooting to get as many people vaccinated as possible, but Vaccination Denial is going to be a roadblock. So the point of the clinical exercise is to manage the effects of the disease over the next couple of generations, and wait for the thing to evolve into something that's more of an inconvenience than a lethal threat.
Fake lord help us.
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